[R] Oddity with names

[Andrew Robinson]

At 08:01 AM 7/18/2002 +0100, Brian D. Ripley wrote:
>On Wed, 17 Jul 2002, Andrew Robinson wrote:
>
> > Hi all,
> >
> > I'm using R 1.5.1 on Windows 2000.  The following snippet of code doesn't
> > seem to do anything - no error is reported, and there is no name change.
> >
> > names(myFrame[,c(1:3)]) <- c("name1", "name2", "name3")
> >
> > This code however works nicely:
> >
> > names(myFrame)[c(1:3)] <- c("name1", "name2", "name3")
> >
> > Can anyone suggest why the first doesn't work?  Ought an error be reported?
>
>It does work.  It creates a new object myFrame[,c(1:3)] and changes its
>names.  That's not what you wanted, but R is your servant not your master
>and does allow you to do such things.

I'm sorry but I'm still confused.  Do you mean that another object called 
myFrame is created, with the new names?  It doesn't appear in the objects() 
list.  The original is still there, within unchanged names.

Andrew

Andrew Robinson                  Phone: 208-885-7115
Department of Forest Resources   Fax:   208-885-6226
University of Idaho              E: andrewr at uidaho.edu
Po Box 441133                    WWW: http://www.uidaho.edu/~andrewr
Moscow, ID 83843                 and: http://www.biometrics.uidaho.edu/
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